Killing Flash wasn't a FU for Flash Developers. The only reason why Flash was banned was because it provided a poor experience on a touchscreen device, performed horribly and was a battery drain.
The way to get Apple's attention is for Google or Firefox to develop a superior browser and browsing experience on Android, that users take notice is missing from iOS and is regarded as a USP for Android.
And Apple's restriction has nothing to do with "only 1 icon"; you can ship competing browsers, and in fact Google ships a "Chrome" on iOS.
The restriction is on the rendering engine.
And note that this restriction does not "serve the users". Users who want a faster, or safer, or more compatible browser with some favorite site of theirs that is pushing the envelope on mobile apps via the web are not able to use a better browsers with a better rendering engine.
Look at how many people run Chrome and Firefox on Windows and OS X, when there is an existing browser available. They are not all "developers"; they are users looking for faster rendering, more compatibility with services that are pushing the envelope of web apps, a safer experience, and the like.
Now replace "Apple" with "Microsoft" in that sentence.
Second, at the time IE was stale beyond belief and quite obviously inventing compatibility issues just to further its own dominance. Safari team have done none such thing, they just move at their own pace, doing the usual Apple thing, you can complain about their obliviousness but still attribute malice? That's rich. Webkit is opensource FFS.
The case against IE was not that Microsoft bundled it with the OS. Its completely different from what Safari on iOS is. The problem with IE back in 2000 was that Microsoft was:
1. Bundling their browser with their OS. 2. Had 90% of the browser market share as a result of (1). 3. Using that market share to break web standards and implement proprietary IE only features that broke html for everyone else and made it impossible to compete, because if you made a standards compliant web browser in 2002 it would not render pages properly that were designed for IE.
I don't exactly know what made the US fed care so much about preserving web standards over a lot of other violated standards by monopolistic entrenched interests, but their suit was entirely about Microsoft using its position as an overwhelming market dominator of web browsers to usurp web standards.
Apple really can't do that. Safari's market share, even as the only iOS browser engine, is peanuts. All they are doing is making their own platform irrelevant, and since they are not doing the whole "proprietary web that cannot render right in Chrome" thing, they aren't an antitrust case for being incompetent.
You can read all about it here (search for Netscape): http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
Even when the EU looked into IE specifically, they weren't directly concerned with web standards: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-09-15_en.htm?local...
Well, Chrome is doing exactly that today. Extending HTML with proprietary features, leading to situatons where websites work "best in Chrome", even today.
The reason Microsoft was on the hook was because it was a software vender forcing its choice. Apple is a hardware+software vendor, and when you own both the software and the hardware, you can make more restrictive choices and are not open to the same class of laws.
it's dumb, but that's the main legal difference here as to why the microsoft case doesn't apply to apple.
I can understand their wanting to have some say on what may be the sole future platform, but lets not pretend it's for some altruistic reason.
The real restriction is on executing JavaScript, scripting language execution isn't allowed except around some exceptions for Lua in game engines.
If users installed Chrome, and their battery died an hour earlier or more, would they blame Chrome? Most would not. Most people have no idea that different versions of the application (a browser) can have that large of a difference in power drain.
That's clearly bs though. Most of those could continue to have one icon they can click. Nobody is forcing two more icons on them. A page from Windows history - for a long time even though alternative browsers were always available people continued to click on the one blue e icon until IE languished more each passing day and alternatives got better and better. Apple could keep safari top notch and most will not realize that alternatives exist. But if they don't (as current status quo implies they're slower to catch up with standards and fix bugs) people switch and progress continues.
I think not suffering from websites saying "sorry, iOS is not supported" qualifies as a superior browsing experience.
You'd easily be shown to be the asshole when a jailbreaker or someone with a proxy spoofed their user agent and loaded your page just fine. Not supporting a browser without a valid technical reason that the layperson can ever sort of understand will totally undermine your position.
Only 5.9% of Android users are on obsolete 2.x. 5.1% are on 4.0.x, for which Chrome was just EOL'ed at version 42 (http://blog.chromium.org/2015/03/freezing-chrome-for-ice-cre...), which compares very favorably to the current and previous versions of Safari (http://caniuse.com/#compare=chrome+42,safari+7,safari+7.1,sa...).
Ultimately I'd think the only noticable effect it would have is the 2s it takes users to navigate away from the site to never return again.
[1] For the life of me, I have never understood how childish one has to be to have an _emotional response_ to something like that. Whenever people would ask me my opinion and I'd state why I chose X over Y, they'd project "Wow you really hate Apple" onto me for some reason.
My point is that your business model is what you can control and change and the odds of changing Apple's business model without changing the nature of the market are zero. Changing your business model can change the market.
Finally, if your business's customers are more loyal to orthogonal aspects of Apple than to your business then it is better to think of those customers as Apple's rather than your business's. There's nothing to be gained by wishing it were otherwise.
If your business has a dependency on Apple, your options are limited. If you have a manager, your options are to do as your manager directs; or not and run the risks; or find another job.
1. That Apple isn't a nice person or a mean person because Apple is an "it" not a "they."
2. That the only important thing is running a sound business and that decisions are ruthlessly grounded in economics.
3. That none of it is personal.
A concerted campaign of browser sniffing and delivering a "We don't serve your kind here" to Mobile Safari users is going to stand a much better chance of Apple's attention than a petition. There's nothing wrong with treating the current situation as just business, but if it really needs to change then that change has to be driven by market changes. A Hallmark Card to Tim Cooke ain't gonna do it.